Edward Norton Quotes

I didn't have a lot of independent film connections. It really took until the digital film revolution came along that I realized that I could do it myself.

Well, in our industry it's that the movies cost so much money to make they have to appeal to a broad audience. And I think that's part of what will loosen up in the future, as technology makes it cheaper, you'll be able to make films for a more selective audience. I think people will be able to make more personal movies.

If I made a film today, it would certainly be on digital.

My theory is that there's a knee-jerk reaction against technology in movie making.

What I'm trying to do is to make films - 'I Origins' is one of them - with the new generation of filmmakers. I want to support that.

The film industry is moving towards digital technology.

Yes, I would like to be involved in something that would hopefully be a blockbuster, but I'm interested in seeing new filmmakers telling new stories and to able to help them do that.

[ Digital revolution ] only has allowed me to work faster, editing digitally, which I'm doing right now, a film on volcanoes. I can edit almost as fast as I'm thinking, editing with celluloid means always searching for this little reel of film, and number it, and scribble on it with some sort of pens, and gluing it together, and working on a flatbed. It's much, much slower.

I can say is usually people are slightly confused. They think that silent movies are old. But, the fact is, they are old because they have been made in the '20s. That's the thing that makes them old. Not the format. The format is just a format. It's not an old format.

Anybody can make a movie, if you have the will. The digital revolution has made it very inexpensive to make a film. Anybody who wants to can do it.

The great lesson in microeconomics is to discriminate between when technology is going to help you and when it's going to kill you. And most people do not get this straight in their heads. But a fellow like Buffett does. For example, when we were in the textile business, which is a terrible commodity business, we were making low-end textiles-which are a real commodity product. And one day, the people came to Warren and said, "They've invented a new loom that we think will do twice as much work as our old ones."

Whatever the advantages of the machine may be - and they are many - the very ease of its use is bound to make away with intimacy - the intercourse of human beings, of animals, or of that which we still think of as the natural world.

When you produce and direct your own film you havethe somewhat consoling feeling that the producer will kill for you.

The process of making films is so technically demanding that it's a distraction. You don't spend your time thinking about the philosophical content, which is often very depressing.

Well, as far as film, either you're making a film or you're making videos. Digital capture is always trying to emulate the range and look of film. I believe personally that film has more.

I got my first part in Silent Fall, 1994 - I guess I was 15 or 16 - which was really outrageous because I still knew nothing. I don't think I really learned how to land on my marks until after Empire Records in 1995, 'cause sometimes I'll see a shot in that film, and I'm like "Whoa, I just walked over to the corner."

I think it's a total fallacy for people to say, "You couldn't make those old movies today." I think there's more ways to get a movie made today than ever in the history of the entertainment industry. It's a very exciting time to work in movies, if you're a creative person looking to make a very personal, weird vision.

I know that Madonna is not a first-time filmmaker, but I have worked with a lot of first time filmmakers and I have worked with a lot of inexperienced film directors so that never has particularly worried me - I find it quite exciting - but I have never worked with a director who has had so little experience of directing who was so prepared.

There is an access to... people can now afford very high quality technology, where you can have a very good reproduction of a large picture on a large screen at home. People go out less. There's all kinds of reasons. I don't know that it's going to stay that way but, I think also, we've got to start making better movies.

I love the new technology in terms of giving access to doing more independent work. When I first started out, any film had to rent from Panavision and the expenses were humongous. Now, given the advances in technology, you can put out extraordinary quality filmmaking at nothing like the price it used to be.

We try to make films for people [that are] the films that we'd like to see. They're not easy to get made. They're hard to get made. You have to keep the budget low to get them made. But at the end of the day, I don't really worry about competition, because I don't really think of it that way. I don't feel like I'm in a race with anybody.

There are many things that have stayed consistent. But the biggest change, of course, is technology, the way it's used, the way films are shot, the format that they're shot in, and the way films, of course, are edited. It's very different than it was in the past.

I'm just thinking of 2001, which I think is the most expensive independent film ever made - which is great, someday I hope I will do one. But I know the parameters when I got onto this project - I have to take care of everyone, make sure that they are all on board, and this process interests me.

I think in the '80s, when I started making films, we were all suspicious of these technologies. We were all convinced they would filter out any emotion and sense of intimacy, and the films I made during that period reflected that. In fact, what has happened is the opposite. I think we're saturated with a degree of intimacy we would never have expected, and we're trying to sort through this idea of complete access to each other's lives on an ongoing basis. Our emotions aren't filtered out at all. They're actually accelerated.

The traditions of Hollywood are grand and great and are going to survive forever, in a way. But they're not going to be the only way for much longer. The technology is such now that you don't have to have millions of dollars to make a movie. You can make one with a computer.